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It'll be a very bad move on Trump's part if he issues a pardon for Manafort. His disapproval rating is sitting at around 60% (!). Even Republicans are turning on Trump, with the action they took against SA, despite Pompeo's pleas.

I get the sense that this was kind of expected (Manafort's double dealing), considering how quickly they got Cohen to go to court this morning and plead guilty on the spot to a new set of charges and willing to testify.

Manafort will still likely be killed if he's pardoned - he's a loose end for Trump, Putin, a good portion of the Ukraine, and God knows who else. There's a lot of people that would sleep easier with Manafort taking a dirt nap.

Just looking at Mueller's resume alone, I think he was ready for something like this to happen.

Toying with Trump
In the 18 months that special counsel Robert Mueller has been probing Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, there has been one, big Watergate-style question hanging over Washington.

What does he know and when will he show it?

The events of the past few days suggest a two-part answer — quite a bit, and very soon.

Making a $130,000 US hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Arranging for a friendly tabloid publisher to buy and bury the story of an ex-Playboy model who also claimed to have had an affair with the man who is now U.S. president.

Both actions count as illegal campaign contributions, and Cohen faces four to five years in jail.

But today's plea goes to the heart of what Mueller has been probing over the past year-and-a-half — whether Trump had undisclosed ties to the Russian government, and whether his campaign colluded with the Kremlin to boost his chances in the 2016 vote.

The nine-page charge sheet details how Cohen "misled" two U.S. Congressional committees when he claimed that a planned Trump real estate venture in Moscow fell apart at the very beginning of the campaign in January 2016. It also indicates he lied when he said he never succeeded in making contact with Vladimir Putin's office.

Cohen now admits that discussions carried on into June 2016, and that the Russian President's office did respond to his request for help in securing land and financing for the project; a gaudy, glass tower that would soar above every building in Moscow and have Trump's name at the very top.
He also reveals that plans were afoot to send Trump to Russia mid-campaign to hammer out a deal and perhaps meet with Putin.

However, Mueller now appears to have a witness who will testify that the president lied when he claimed that he had no business dealings in Russia and that discussions about the project ended at a very preliminary stage.

That might sound like a big setback for the special prosecutor, but the timing of the announcement — just a couple of days after Trump finally supplied written answers to the special prosecutor's questions about Russia, the campaign, and the firing of FBI Director James Comey — has raised some eyebrows.

"Under the new law, income made by American companies’ overseas subsidiaries will face United States taxes that are half the rate applied to their domestic income, 10.5 percent compared with the new top corporate rate of 21 percent."

If you think its that much better youre taking Trumpanista Propaganda at face value

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The same huh? He actually met with them. Something past presidents haven't done. You think things get better without discussions and good faith? I'm also pretty sure the families of the soldiers that had their remains returned might disagree. Lirl.

He's trying to make progress instead of sitting on his hands and doing nothing. You have to start making forward progress at some point for it to get better. Something past administrations failed at. You can hate Trump all you want....but saying what he's done in NK isn't positive just exposes how partisan you are. Give credit where due.

The same huh? He actually met with them. Something past presidents haven't done. You think things get better without discussions and good faith? I'm also pretty sure the families of the soldiers that had their remains returned might disagree. Lirl.

He's trying to make progress instead of sitting on his hands and doing nothing. You have to start making forward progress at some point for it to get better. Something past administrations failed at. You can hate Trump all you want....but saying what he's done in NK isn't positive just exposes how partisan you are. Give credit where due.

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You're poking through shit with your fingers hoping to find a corn kernel to eat.

What Trump has done in NK really hasnt amounted to much, and the whole time kinda showed how they were in full amateur hour mode.

If you think it means much of anything just shows much you're willing to follow the tune of an Orange Minstrel.

The framing in this New York Times article on North Korean missile production is a bit, shall we say, deceptive:

North Korea is moving ahead with its ballistic missile program at 16 hidden bases that have been identified in new commercial satellite images, a network long known to American intelligence agencies but left undiscussed as President Trump claims to have neutralized the North’s nuclear threat.

The satellite images suggest that the North has been engaged in a great deception [bold mine-DL]: It has offered to dismantle a major launching site — a step it began, then halted — while continuing to make improvements at more than a dozen others that would bolster launches of conventional and nuclear warheads.​

It is wrong to say that North Korea is being deceptive by continuing to develop the missile program that it has been developing for years. There is no agreement that prohibits them from doing what they are doing, and so they can’t be deceiving anyone by carrying on with their missile development. It is to be expected that North Korea would continue to develop and build missiles when their government has never said that it would not do so.

If anyone has attempted a “great deception” over the last six months, it is the administration officials that have pretended that North Korea agreed to disarm at Singapore. If the existence of these sites “contradicts Mr. Trump’s assertion that his landmark diplomacy is leading to the elimination of a nuclear and missile program,” the fault lies entirely with Trump. He is the one making false claims of progress in pursuing the administration’s unrealistic goals, and it is hardly the first time that reality has not lined up with the president’s statements. When faced with the evidence of these sites, the administration continues to promote the fiction that North Korea has agreed to disarm:

A State Department spokesman responded to the findings with a written statement suggesting that the government believed the sites must be dismantled: “President Trump has made clear that should Chairman Kim follow through on his commitments, including complete denuclearization and the elimination of ballistic missile programs, a much brighter future lies ahead for North Korea and its people.”​

The administration has been overselling the results of its talks with North Korea, and they have been putting words in Kim’s mouth for months. Only the president’s cheerleaders have been gullible enough to take these claims seriously. North Korea has certainly never agreed to the elimination of all of its ballistic missile programs, and when our government tells us that North Korea has done this they are simply making it up and hoping no one will notice.

Presenting North Korean behavior as a “deception” implies that they have made commitments that they are secretly violating, but there have been so definite, specific commitments made as part of any agreement with the U.S. or South Korea. Even if North Korea is prepared to agree to some limits on or reductions of its arsenal, it makes sense that they would keep building up that arsenal to give them more bargaining chips. However, as long as the administration remains wedded to the fantasy that North Korea has already agreed to give up its nuclear weapons and missiles, there won’t be any progress on more modest, achievable goals.

The same huh? He actually met with them. Something past presidents haven't done. You think things get better without discussions and good faith? I'm also pretty sure the families of the soldiers that had their remains returned might disagree. Lirl.

He's trying to make progress instead of sitting on his hands and doing nothing. You have to start making forward progress at some point for it to get better. Something past administrations failed at. You can hate Trump all you want....but saying what he's done in NK isn't positive just exposes how partisan you are. Give credit where due.

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Uhm. No. Not quite.

Madeleine Albright was the last person to make progress with NK, under Clinton's administration - she actually managed to develop the very beginnings of diplomacy with them. The Bush admin that followed decided the lump them in with the Axis of Evil speech and things were never the same since - now, NK doesn't care what kind of attention they get, just so long as they get attention and make a splash on the world stage.

Progress with the Trump administration? Really? NK was being ignored for the most part, apart from having sanctions placed on them over and over again. Trump showing up gave Kim Jong Un legitimacy with his own people - they now look at him as being the guy that made the U.S. come to the table. They've continued building nukes and even accelerated their own program, instead of denuclearize, which was the whole reason why North Korea was deemed a threat, wasn't it?

I seem to remember when he was talking tough it was "he's gonna start a war!" Then when he tries to play nice it's 'he's legitimizing Kim' it's a lose lose for Trump no matter what he does in the current political climate. The blind hatred that creates flip flopping like mentioned above is really frustrating to me.